Yoga is a healthy exercise program that offers a lot of health benefits. Here, we’ve listed some of the health benefits that you can get by performing certain yoga poses.

Gisele Bundchen – Yoga

The health benefits of yoga are innumerable. This physical exercise program can be used to create clarity and harmony in life.

Many weight loss watchers are also using it as part of their 6 week weight loss plan.

When you regularly practice yoga, you’ll be stronger and slimmer.

Being healthy with yoga lets you achieve a more flexible body, apart from having sharper mind and more relaxed sense of self.

Yoga isn’t like other fitness programs that you can practice to being healthy. This is because this exercise program doesn’t judge. Its approach isn’t forceful. It won’t give you a negative attitude towards fitness. This isn’t a lousy motivator as it can meet you exactly where your body needs to be fixed.

Types of yoga that offer health benefits

There are plenty of options for this type of activity. Each of them has its own benefits. All of them release tension and help you relax your mind and body.

In order to maximize its benefits, you must consider performing that fits your current fitness level. You must also opt for a style that meets your personality and goals.

Here are some of the styles of yoga that can help you obtain its many benefits.

Ashtanga

Ashtanga

This is a challenging style that utilizes special breathing techniques that can help you focus your mind and body.

Bikram

Bikram

I haven’t tried this one yet.

This, too, is challenging since you’ll do a series of 26 yoga poses in a hot room that’s above 100 degrees. But this isn’t advisable for patients with hypertension and diabetes.

Iyengar

Iyengar

Because of its gentle in nature, this is ideal for beginners. To get into its different poses, you’ll need to use belts or pillow to help you out.

Kundalini

Kundalini

If you’re looking for a yoga pose that has a spiritual approach, then you’d surely like this style. It includes meditation, chanting and other yoga postures.

Power

If you’re athletic, then this challenging style of yoga can easily meet your fitness needs. It can help in building your upper-body strength and flexibility. This is because you’ll perform one pose to another.

Yoga classes

If you’re just starting out, you might want to consider taking a few classes. In this way, you can easily get the hang of different poses.

Yoga instructors will teach you how to perform specific poses and will help you transition from one pose to another.

What style to consider?

As previously mentioned, yoga has different styles and positions. But you must choose a style based on your fitness goals.

For instance, if you’re planning to use it as part of your 6-week weight loss journey, you should consider getting into a more vigorous style, like power yoga. It lets you workout your total body.

On the other hand, if you’re suffering from injury or having limitations to your movement, then a slower class that helps you focus on alignment is ideal.

If you’re into the spiritual aspects of this exercise program, then yoga styles that involve a lot of chanting and meditation would surely meet your goal

What health benefits can you get from yoga?

From Gisele’s Instagram Account

As previously mentioned, there are tons of them. Below, I’ve listed some of its most important benefits for your health.

Eases back pain

This can be caused by yoga’s way of improving your flexibility to fight against any type of chronic back pain. In an experiment conducted by the HMO Group Health Cooperative, researchers found that those who performed yoga exercises showed greater improvement in their medical condition.

Relieves stress

All yoga poses can reduce the effects of stress in the body. They relax your mind while they lower your cortisol levels.

Other benefits would include lowering your heart rate and regulating blood pressure.

Yoga also improves digestion and eases symptoms of anxiety, asthma and fatigue.

Improves flexibility

Your mobility and flexibility will greatly improve when you do yoga every day. During your first day of performing yoga poses, you’d expect the class to be difficult. You’d have a hard time touching your toes.

But, as long as you practice it on a regular basis, your body could adjust and start using the correct muscles to meet the demands of yoga.

Over time, your muscles would increase their elasticity making it easier for you to perform more poses.

There are many poses of yoga that enhance body alignment. This is one of the reasons yoga is useful in enhancing your posture and relieving your back, joint and muscle problems.

Boosts GABA

GABA is a neurotransmitter. With a lowered amount in the brain, it may cause depression.

Boosts sexual desire

In several studies, researchers found that those who performed a 12-week yoga session have shown to improve their sexual desire and performance. Their orgasms and satisfaction in bed have also improved significantly.

Yoga, per se, increases flow of blow into the genital area. Bear in mind that enhancement in this area is essential to help you feel aroused.

Perfect erection can also be achieved through proper blood flow to the penis.

The baddha konasana is one of the yoga poses that can surely help improve your sexual performance in bed by improving your sexual desire.

Improves sleep

Yes, yoga can also be used as a treatment for those with insomnia. This is according to a study.

However, you must not expect an improvement after your first day of trying out a few poses.

You should expect to feel the results after 2 months of doing yoga on a regular basis.

Another study also concluded that yoga sessions twice a week could help cancer-stricken patients to help them sleep better. Yoga also helped them feel less fatigued after a few sessions of chemotherapy.

The best yoga pose to improve sleep is savasana.

Fights food cravings

However, you must do it on a regular basis to obtain this health benefit of yoga. When you’re aware of your physical and emotional sensations, you’ll be able to practice mindful eating by strengthening your mind-body connections.

The awareness that you get from a certain yoga pose can help you practice breathing awareness allowing you to fine tune your emotions. From there, you can teach your mind to control your food cravings.

With specific breathing exercises, you can control your breathing and help it slow down while cravings strike you.

The best yoga pose is when you do the meditation pose. The trick here is to just concentrate on your breath. Don’t move and don’t react to your surroundings. Just stay present but focus on your breathing.

Improves circulation

Various poses can improve blood circulation. It doesn’t matter what yoga pose you’re performing as each style can enhance blood circulation throughout your body.

As a result of that, it makes transportation of oxygen to the cells more efficient.

Enhances nerve impulses

Diabetes can affect your nerves because of the high levels of sugar in the blood. If the effect is so strong, it’ll damage your nerves, thereby, slowing down nerve impulses.

As a result, your sensation is slightly off. You’ll also feel numbness of your feet. What’s worse is that you’ll suffer from poor bowel movement.

To improve nerve impulses, you can perform yoga asanas. It includes a lot of styles, like shavasan and sarpasan.

When you perform this style every day for 40 minutes, you’re slowly improving your nerve functions. This is especially true if you’ve type 2 diabetes with nerve damage. But the damage on your nerves must only be mild to be alleviated by yoga positions.

To further obtain the health benefits of yoga in improving your nerve impulses, you may want to consider taking lipoic acid, which is an essential nutrient in improving nerve function in patients with diabetes.

In addition to improving nerve impulse, yoga also lowers or regulates blood sugar in patients with type 2 diabetes or a type of diabetes that’s treatable through diet, exercise and some oral medicines.

In order to obtain the health benefits of yoga in patients with diabetes, you must perform at least 40 minutes of yoga each day for straight 40 days.

After that, get a blood test and find out if your blood sugar has reduced significantly. For many yoga performers with diabetes, their fasting blood sugar levels have improved dramatically.

Conclusion

These health benefits of yoga must also be paired with a healthy diet and better healthy eating strategies. And if you’re using yoga for your 6-week weight loss plan you must eat a balanced diet to reap its rewards.

About the author

Janey Danes started her career as a part-time article writer, editor and proofreader in 2008. She specializes in topics related to health, travel, technology, family, and spiritual life. Danes is a licensed medical technologist and she holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Technology. She is also a contributor to Travel Philippines | Entertainment and Medical Technology Avenue. You can also find her on Google+.

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